Tickets are still available at the door beginning 30 minutes prior to showtime.

Event

Lord Franzannian's Royal Olympian Spectacular Vaudeville Show

Dance, music, comedy, storytelling, burlesque, juggling, even feats of amazement! Hosted by storyteller Elizabeth Lord, come see this hilarious romp of live entertainment, and incredible local talent. Proceeds benefit performers and BigShowCity, a non-profit Performing Arts Organization whose mission is to help burgeoning artists realize their ambitions by providing financial and emotional support. Last year's show sold out each night!

The evolution of Vaudeville begins with the Minstrel Show: a performance by white men in blackface make-up using what they claimed were African American dialects, songs, dances, and jokes. Between 1835-1875 Minstrel Shows were the most popular form of entertainment in the U.S. Unfortunately the Minstrel Show also created and perpetuated negative stereotypes of African Americans that has endured in American popular thought long after these shows disappeared.

During the second act of a traditional Minstrel show came the Olio. It was a variety show within the Minstrel show that showcased numerous unrelated acts/talents of the performers. It is from the Olio that variety shows were born. Some variety shows were more bawdy in content and directed at adult audiences, these were called Burlesque shows. There were also Girlie shows where women revealed their legs and performed a cootch dance. This gradually evolved into the modern day Striptease.

By the 1890 variety shows, rechristened the more elegant sounding vaudeville(derived from the French word 'vaudevire,' meaning a popular satirical song) replaced minstrel shows althogether as the nation's favorite entertainment. By then Vaudeville had come to mean a series of unrelated acts, which might include singers, dancers, animal performers, acrobats, and jugglers, which followeed one another in rapid succession.

At it height in the early twenties, Vaudeville was seen by 1,600,000 men, women, and children daily, and there were more than 12,000 performers available to the Vaudeville circuits. The focal point of Vaudeville was the Palace Theater in the heart of New York theater district at Broadway and 47th street. When an act played the Palace, it had reached the pinnacle of success.

Vaudeville, once as popular as television is today, eventually faded into the past with the onset of radio and sound motion pictures in the 1930s. Early radio, movie, and television stars such as Ed Wynn, Milton Berle, Jimmy Durante, and Burns &Allen began their career in Vaudeville.